Many types of printing blankets have long been used. These blankets consist essentially of a layer of compressible material such as cellular rubber to which a lithographic layer capable of producing an impression on a surface, for example, paper, is attached.
These designs present a number of drawbacks, among which we should note sagging due to loss of resiliency, blanket overheating during the printing process, the risk of destabilizing the offset balance during the process, paper flow control problems and vibrations in rapid rotary press machines.
Furthermore, the blankets currently in use are too specialized and can only be used under optimal quality control conditions to the extent that one often needs to use as many different types of printing blankets as there are types of printing to produce
The goal then of this device is to eliminate the aforementioned drawbacks by providing a reversible printing blanket whose structural symmetry allows it to reduce or eliminate the problems of sagging, overheating, paper flow control and vibration.